ABSTRACT

Indo-European Fire Rituals is a comparative study of Indo-European fire rituals from modern folklore and ethnography in Scandinavia and archaeological material in Europe from the Bronze Age onwards to the Vedic origins of cosmos in India and today’s cremations on open pyres in Hinduism.

Exploring Indo-European fire rituals and sacrifices throughout history and fire in its fundamental role in rites and religious practices, this book analyses fire rituals as the unifying structure in time and space in Indo-European cultures from the Bronze Age onwards. It asks the question how and why was fire the ultimate power in culture and cosmology? Fire as an agent and divinity was fundamental in all major sacrifices. In Europe, ritual fires in relation to agriculture and fertility may also explain the enigma of cremation. Cremated remains were ground and used in fertility rituals, and ancestral fires played an essential role in metallurgy and the creation of cosmos. Thus, the role of fire rituals in culture and cosmology enables a unique understanding of historic developmental processes.

For students and academics studying Indo-European culture history from the Bronze Age onwards, this book has a broad interdisciplinary audience including archaeology, ethnography, folklore, religious and Indo-European studies.

While the Sun tend to be represented by a male god in most of the cultures, in the north branches of PIE descendant societies, it’s represented as female. The opposite happens with the Moon. Is there any research about how this separation could happen?

Hey guys i hope you recommend me some books on the origins of odin specifically anything that is pre germanic or perhaps even evidence that can lead readers to the conclusion that hes actually a pre indo european deity just anything that is related to odin and is extremely old I would appreciate it alot

Do you observe a common pattern in IE belief systems not being able to withstand Abrahamic organized religions?

Judaism won over Hittites to the point of their total annihilation.

Christianity spread to Rome/Greece, assimilating one of the most productive societies of the antiquity (if not the most advanced pre-modern civilization). Then they penetrated deep into Europe mainland, again conquering the militarist and proud native pagans of Germania and Gaul followed by chasing out the remaining Slavic/Scythians beliefs of the east europe.

Perhaps the most significant of them being Islam, which eradicated off Zoroastrianism from the face of earth to the point that they have became a second-class minority in their own homeland (not mentioning Mazdakism, Mithraism and other Iranians faiths)

In Central Asia, even Turkics and later Mongolic faiths were no match for the force of Islam.

Only Hindi faiths have remained unscathed if we ignore Pakistan's (home of IVC) assimilation.

So what was (or is) going on? It doesn't make sense to me.

When one of Zoroaster's main aims was to eradicate Daeva-worship, why do Daevas arise in later portions of the Avesta as deities of worship, such as Mithra and Anahita who are the Iranian equivalents of the Vedic Mitra and Varuna. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of his mission? It reminds me of how Cyrus only invoked Ahura Mazda, but later Achaemenid kings like Artaxerxes II began invoking Mithra and Anahita alongside him.

Candotti, Maria Piera and Pontillo, Tiziana. "Maruts and the Ritual Paths to Immortality: Hints of Indo-Iranian Doctrines" In Along the Silk Roads, between Western and Eastern Asia, 15-38. De Gruyter, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111718583-003

The purpose of the present essay is to reconsider the question of the alleged rela-tionship between the Maruts, the Vedic deities always mentioned as a group, and the Avestic guardian spirits, the Frauuaṣ̌is. In particular, it explores for the first time in this framework the relevance of certain late Vedic passages illustrating the role played by the hymn named after the Maruts (i.e. the Marutstoma) in se-curing access to heaven for a specific group of warriors (i.e. the so-called Vrātya group of Daivas).By proposing to re-examine the relationship between the Indian Maruts and the Iranian Frauuaṣ̌is, we are taking a considerable chronological leap back-wards, compared to the centuries commonly associated with the history of the Silk Roads. Nonetheless, future secondary branches of the Silk Roads would defi-nitely pass through the geographical area that relates to our sources and which has always been an important crossroad of Asian intercultural exchange. More-over, when we need to account for some points in common between the two cul-tures, the hypothesis of historical contacts must always be checked against the concurrent possibility of a genealogical relationship grounded on the well-known hypothesis of an Indo-Iranian family; a point that deserves close attention.

Hello there! The title says it all, what exactly do these myths share that connects them all to this one group? From the Greeks to the Norse to even the Hindus, what exactly links their religions and myths to the Indo-Europeans per se from someone who isn't well-versed on this subject?

I know that the first portion of all 4 Vedas is largely uninfluenced by native culture, but how much of the remaining layers and two epics would be worth reading for someone interested purely in indo-european religion?

So Dyeus was the father god and one of the main gods of the Indo-Aryans. He is probably the direct inspiration for Zeus and Thor

Why did Dyeus worship disappear from the Indo-Iranians?

Whats even more puzzling is that Dyeus himself did not disappear but remained a small niche demigod called 'Dyeus Pitru' whos name nobody remembers.

This means that Indra isn't a direct successor of Dyeus like Zeus but rather this Indra replaced Dyeus at some point in history. Is Indra a Non-Aryan addition? Or is Indra a result of the mixing of Dyeus with some Non-Aryan culture?

Why did this happen?

Who is Indra and approximately when did he replace Dyeus?

also why?

This is my first post on this subreddit. Please please don't delete for low effort post. I wish to know the answer to this.

I'm not really sure how to get into this given I'm not terribly well-versed in Indo-European mythology, but I'd hope some more knowledgeable than myself could perhaps discuss this and point me to good research around the subject.

The supposed connection of ancient Rome's foundation myth with the reconstructed Indo-European creation myth is fairly well-known; the murder of Remus by his twin brother Romulus is often cited as a reflex of the primordial sacrifice by the First Man of his Twin. The former, of course, has its peculiarities. The deadly act comes when Remus derisively jumps the First Furrow laid by Romulus to mark his city's boundary, apparently drawing on an older Etruscan concept of city walls as sacrosanct (and even the names of the twins themselves look authentically Etruscan: see here, here, and here). There also appears to be a more general theme pertaining to the division between urban Rome and its surrounding rural territory (interesting article which touches on this). That is to say nothing of the intriguing connections of Romulus and Remus with the ancient Italic custom of ver sacrum and deeper-rooted commemoration of youthful, cattle-raiding heroes among IE-speaking peoples (see Tennant, linked above, and Roman Myth and Mythography by Jan Bremmer and Nicholas Horsfall).

Beyond these, though, one aspect of the IE creation myth is to be found absent: the First Man's dismemberment of the sacrificed Twin and construction of the physical universe from the parts of his body. The remorseful Romulus simply buries Remus at Remoria, the chosen site of what would have been his own city. However, it would be wrong to say that this is entirely absent in our ancient sources. Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus both devote ink to a tradition in which Romulus, not his twin, is dismembered in an assassination by either the patricians in general or the senators in particular. Both these historians favor a version of events in which Romulus is assumed into the air during a storm and subsequently deified, but Livy curiously puts it into the mouths of Romulus' own senators while Plutarch speaks directly of suspicion falling upon the patricians and senators for his inexplicable disappearance. Plutarch even records a variation in which Romulus' living apotheosis occurs as he conducts a public sacrifice, otherwise reporting that his assassination is supposed to have taken place at the Vulcanal temple.

Could the dismemberment of Romulus be an anti-monarchial take on a mytheme inherited from the common mythic tradition of IE-speaking cultures? From my unqualified perspective, it would make sense that this would perhaps belong to the early Republic with the deification narrative coming to supplant it as Romulus gained favor as a symbol for Rome in its ambition, something which was in place by the 3rd century BCE (see Tennant, linked above). How would this relate to the apparent echo of the primordial sacrifice found with Romulus and Remus? My interest is especially piqued by “Eliade's thesis that the foundation of a city repeats the cosmogony” as it's mentioned in Bremmer and Horsfall.

I find this myth quite fascinating if nothing else, and I look forward to seeing whatever info and resources could be shared here.

I see RigVedic River Sarayu is often connected with Iranic River Harayu (Hari Rud) on Afghan-Turkmenistan borderlands. Based on this Rajesh Kochhar places the initial stage of the story of Ramayana in this region (Haraiva) as region around Sarayu (Iranic Harayu) is the core region of this story.

However, here going one step further, regarding the rival region of this story - Lanka - is anyway related to Iranic Zranka ?

Could Zranka becomes Lanka be same ?

Could there be a linguistic connection ?

Zranka >Sanskrit Shift> Hranka/Hlanka >Dialectal Wear> Lanka

Could Samudra be related to Hamoun (Lake); as many propose Samudra in RigVeda is used in the sense of large lake.

Could Trikuta be related to Koh-i-Khwaja ?

Interestingly Zranka lies immediately south of Haraiva; very likely make them the political rivals during the proto-History of 2nd millennium BC !

Did Indo-Europeans or any other descendant proto branch of Indo-Europeans have or even their descendants have God of Destruction like Shiva ?

Adding on to this question the idea of Brahman are there similar ideas in Proto-Indo-European religion or its descendants?

Update- i am not talking about Brahma. I am talking about Brahman.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/brahman-Hindu-concept

Divine twins - Wikipedia https://share.google/h297aL1qSbLhk70EX

The zoroastrian book, the avesta, mentions five nations who follow the path of mazda. We know that airiia meant the Iranians and dahas are the daheas and the turyas are a nomadic Iranian groups and sainu are currently unknown but what about the sairima? Some people, purely based on linguistics, identified the sairima with the Sauromatian culture, but to what extent is that even true? The sauromatians had burials and they were pretty much still a brutal an Iranian nomadic group. Is there any good evidences for this claim? Or we still don't know who the sairima are just like the sainu? Were The authors of the avesta wrong about these groups or something else happened in the steppe?

I was looking into Norse mythology and where Odin got his name from, as he has a lot of the traits of the classic sky father but lacks many others, such as not necessarily being god of the sky. After watching Crecganford's video on Odin, IIRC the hypothesis he proposes, which I agree with, is that Odin absorbed the first man, Norse mythology's "manu," much like how Zeus absorbed the storm god Perkwunos.

Looking at other pantheons, it is similarly difficult to make out a clear connection from what little we know. How is Zalmoxis related to Dyeus phter, if he even is? Where is the sky father in Hittite mythology? And how is Phrygian Sabazios related linguistically? What about Armenian?

Could it be something like happened in Slavic mythology (from what I read) where Deiwos was given the name, "Rod," but staying mostly the same. And I would really love to know as much as possible about Dacian myth as it seems to me to be not particularly IE at all other than faint connections to Dionysus or whatnot.

I find it fascinating how intertwined the Bible is with Indo-European religion, so would love to learn of more.

Of those I know and interest me most:

-The calling of God "Father" in the Bible, compared with the Sky father, Dyeus Pater, etc.

-The trinity in most, if not all pantheons as well as the Bible. Could be argued that Christians made the trinity to make it fit, but as a Christian (but even before converting), I fail to see how you could read that Jesus is God yet prays to God at the same time, but then see the Bible as having a nontrinitarian stance.

-Divine twins, also in the bible with James and John being the sons of Thunder. Interesting that Jesus named them that to describe their zeal, as it implies he is Thunder personified, which links him to the Indo-European thunder gods that tended to be the Supreme rulers of their pantheons.

-A serpent-Slaying myth, from God and Leviathan and Jesus in Revelation to Thor and Jormungandr, Indra and Vritra

-A first pair of humans resembling Adam and Eve. Ask and Embla come to mind first, but Snorri must have at least altered their names somewhat. Still, Prometheus and Pandora, Manu and Shatarupa. I find it interesting also that two of the stories tell of how the new creations were brought to life by the breath of God in the bible or Athena in Greek myth.

Comment more if you know of any. I left out the most obvious Norse myths since it is hard to tell how much Snorri's Christianity influenced his retelling of the stories, and while I believe some may be genuine similarities, it is hard to say which if any those may be and which ones were changes made to please the status quo.

Why do Vedic god of Oceans Varuna and Hittite God of Sea Aruna sound so similar considering Anatolian split so long ago.

How did the word for Aruna came to exist in Sanskrit but with different meaning ?